Defeat shall not be mine, nor shall remorse; No storm infernal matches my attack. No heart is brave enough to keep on course, And dare to match my terms, and turn me back. I shall not tire. Neither fairs, nor ills Shall once divert me from my purposed path. Nor hope of peace, though every weakling wills It, ever be enough to stay my wrath. To speak my name, and "failure", is to lie; To question this, is treachery itself. For I have won, and even as I die I shall remain the master of myself. And on my tomb, they'll write for all to see: "'Just one more turn', for all eternity".
Tag: focus
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My week 6 of this Round of Words (other participants) was fairly productive, but not very focussed.
I didn’t do as much as I’d planned on Conkers, only reading 25 pages of the draft. And while I did get a handwritten scene typed up, it was very much a last-minute thing.
The rest of my week was occupied by other writing, including one thing that might turn into a larger project.
My goal of 40 pages per week may have been a bit optimistic; thinking about and taking notes on each page proceeds much more slowly than normal reading. Which I suppose I should have expected.
But that’s not to say there’s not room for improvement. Most of my editing was done late in the week; if I started on it earlier, I could probably get more done without losing too much free time. And I could probably have spent less time playing computer games.
As such, I’m keeping the same 40-page goal for next week.
Good luck and happy writing!
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I’m inclined to just use the same four goals as last round (write 1000 words/week, and five days out of seven; reflect weekly; read six books), since they seemed to work pretty well.
But my real goal isn’t to surpass a word limit each week — it’s to finish writing a story. And that, I didn’t do.
To fix that, I’m aiming specifically to finish Conkers this round. Based on a fairly rough outline, I estimate the full story will be about 50 scenes, 10 of which are still unfinished.
That suggests I can finish Conkers by the end of this round. But I sometimes finish a scene in only 500 words, so I suspect doing two scenes a week should be possible. I’ll see how it goes.
For now, these are my weekly goals:
- Finish two scenes towards Conkers
- Write on at least five days
- Reflect on what I write
- Read half a book (i.e. one every two weeks)
Good luck and happy writing!
Edit: oops, forgot the linky.
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My progress this week of #ROW80 (other people’s progress) was fairly average.
I wrote five days out of seven, got another 900 words written on Conkers, and started reading a new book. That puts me behind my goals, but not by much.
Reflection
I haven’t been getting good word counts on Conkers for a while. While the research project is, sort of, an excuse, I think there’s more to it than that.
I feel as though I’m approaching a good stopping point for the plot; it may just be wishful thinking, but I think I can finish the first story arc within a year of starting it.
But I’m not getting any closer to that point.
I keep writing scenes ahead of the main plot, and introducing side stories that will take their own time to finish, and haven’t really got closer to the climax than I was a month ago.
That’s not for lack of thinking about it; I’ve been making plans for Conkers for most of the month, and just not carrying them out.
I suspect the problem is that I’m too focussed on the plans, and afraid to write it in case it falls short of them. In which case, the solution is to just write something, and worry about it once the scene’s typed up.
That can be my extra goal for this week: write a draft of the climax of Conkers
Good luck and happy writing!
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My new goal this round is to write daily, and I managed that with flying colours — not a day missed yet.
Distracted by my focus on the new, I didn’t start off quite as well on my other goals. I had planned to write a post about the research project, but I didn’t have the data I needed; so I spent the time collecting data, and only wrote a few hundred words of notes. By the time I realised I’d have to get my word count from Conkers, it was the weekend, and I only finished half a scene.
I did get quite a bit of poetry written; just not the stuff I wanted to focus on. Now, all I have to do is turn that same focus on to Conkers…
With such a half-hearted week, I didn’t want to miss reflection, so it’s in this post.
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This is my 10th check-in for this round of #ROW80 (linky).
My biggest progress was in reading: 139 pages of The Three Musketeers. That’s good progress, but I was on holiday; I’m not confident I can manage another 400 pages in the month I have left.
After reading Shan Jeniah’s post on work ethic, I suspect my reading goals this round may have been poorly thought out. I’m trying to force myself to read heavy books quickly, and it isn’t working.
Not to mention, I’ve missed out on entertainment reading for the sake of focussing on those books; and reading more for pleasure was part of my reason for setting reading goals to start with.
To try and make this less of a manacle, I’m going back to aiming for a set number of any books. I’ll try for a book every two weeks, or two more by the end of the round.
My writing was also productive on the holiday, although I didn’t stay focussed on Conkers. I wrote 800 words of narrative — half Conkers, half a scene that doesn’t belong to a plot yet — and at least as much again on miscellaneous non-story projects, many of them new ideas.
I did get a few new ideas for Conkers, though, which I might try and put into writing this week.
Good luck and happy writing!
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(linky)
My biggest concern with what I did in Round 2 is that it was too “diffuse”; the goals I was successful on were all relatively easy things, and I worry that my other goals suffered for focussing on them.
To avoid that this round, I want to make all my goals more focussed on finishing what I started. For writing, I’ll aim for 1,000 words a week on Conkers or another narrative WIP, and to work on something non-narrative (sonnets, research, etc.) at least one day a week. That should keep me on track to finishing something.
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For this, the final week of ROW80 Round 2 (linky), my only progress was 1000 words of writing on Conkers. That wasn’t enough to finish the arc I’d planned for this round, but it did end one story thread — while starting another, but still.
In retrospect, my goal for Conkers might never have been achievable; the scenes grew in the telling, and I’ve decided to insert a whole extra plotline before I get to the point I was originally aiming for.
If I didn’t meet my goal for focus, I balanced it with word count. I wrote 25,000 words this round: 1,500 more than last round, and an average of over 2000 words per week. This was about half on Conkers and sonnets, and half on other material (other WIP’s, research, dreams, etc.).
Reflection, which I only managed in six of the twelve weeks, was balanced out by reading. If Worm is allowed to count, I’ve read a total of 11 books over less than 12 weeks.
What does this mean for my goals next round?
I’ve certainly done more this round, but it’s been spread across arguably lazier things: reading, and writing things that don’t have to be part of a story.
If I’m serious about improving my writing, maybe I need more specific goals. Quality over quantity!
The same could be applied to my reading goals. While I do want to keep reading novels, I’d also like to finish a few of the books I’m reading for research. Again, a more precise focus may be in order.
All this “more precise focus” is sounding like a lot of work, but I suppose that’s necessary if I really want to learn to write.
And do I really want to? I don’t know.
That’s something I need to sort out by the start of the next round. :-)
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After a few good weeks, I’m falling behind again. All I’ve written since Wednesday is a sonnet. That puts me at around 2,200 words for the week, or around 1000 if you ignore the philosophy-related stuff.
I was away this weekend, but this time, I don’t think that’s the problem. Even though I didn’t get any writing done on Friday, I could have got lots done on Saturday. And the thing is, I did — just not on this project. I did some research for one of my other projects, finally got around to doing some programming, and was distracted mostly by things I thought were somewhat worthwhile.
In other words, the problem now is that I’m applying the habits ROW80 taught me to other projects. I remember someone else in ROW80 blogging about the importance of doing multiple projects (sorry that I can’t remember who; I’ll edit in a link if I do). Unfortunately, most of my other projects at the moment aren’t really writing-related, so I can’t easily transfer my goals over to them.
I could change my goals, but I do still really want to finish this story; it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I want to prove to myself that I can follow something like this right through to the end (or at least the End of Part One).
I suppose I’ll keep trying to work on my WIP, but accept that I might be doing some of my 1500 words on other projects for the next few weeks.
Good luck and happy writing!
PS: Here’s my linky for the end of Week 8.
PPS: No reflection today, since I haven’t done the writing to reflect on; and I need to get to bed.
Jenkins Rising 